Chamber and committees

I agree that public messaging and the public awareness campaign are an extremely important part of the whole picture. In advance of bonfire night in 2021 and 2020, we ran three different awareness-raising and public safety campaigns. I will speak about them, because we will repeat them this year.

The first is the nationwide campaign on the impact of fireworks, which aims to improve people’s awareness and understanding of the impacts that fireworks can have on people and animals. It encourages people who will use fireworks to think about the impact on others and to follow the safety instructions and the firework code.

The second campaign is run in partnership with the charity Crimestoppers and it is supported by Police Scotland. It is focused on areas where there are higher levels of misuse. It focuses on improving people’s awareness and understanding of the existing rules and regulations, in particular, and how and when people should report misuse of fireworks, potentially anonymously. That goes back to the points that were made earlier about people seeing illegal fireworks being sold in their areas. It gives them an anonymous way to report that information.

The third campaign provides advice in retail outlets, at the point of sale for consumer fireworks, on the safe and appropriate use of fireworks.

We plan to run those campaigns again this year. If Parliament agrees to the provisions in the bill, we also hope that some of them will be in operation before bonfire night—the proxy purchasing offence and the provisions relating to pyrotechnics.

Absolutely, because it is key. The best way to achieve the culture change on fireworks that we talked about at the beginning is to make sure that the public have that awareness of how to use fireworks safely, and for everyone to respect everyone else. People also need to have a strong knowledge of how to keep themselves safe. We provide that through consistent public messaging, which we repeat year on year. Every time the regulations change, we will update the messaging accordingly.

I envisage that the provision will result in an overall reduction in the number of fireworks going off and in the unpredictable and sporadic nature of that. However, I take your point about the use of private displays. I am open to considering the Parliament’s view on that. I am particularly interested to see what the committee says about that provision in its report.

We considered that. In a moment, I will ask David Bell to explain the process that we went through to get to the point that we are now at.

The misuse of pyrotechnics is a growing problem at certain events and in certain places. That was evidenced to us by Police Scotland, so we were really keen to get a provision in the bill that worked to address that. There are gaps in the existing legislation in relation to the carrying and possession of pyrotechnics, which might inhibit the police from taking proactive and preventative action before a situation becomes dangerous and difficult to control. That is key, and that is what we seek to achieve with the provision.

In 2017, Police Scotland had a working group on the issue, which presented recommendations. In 2021, the Scottish Government hosted stakeholder discussions, which proposed

“an offence of being in possession of a pyrotechnic in a public place without a reasonable excuse or lawful authority”.

That proposal was considered and consulted on as part of the 2021 consultation. However, when we were developing the bill, we felt that there was potential for unintended consequences to arise from the wider provisions in the bill as it was drafted at that time. There was potential that it would deter the legitimate and necessary use of pyrotechnic articles for personal safety, such as visual distress signals. That became a concern, so we thought that a more specific offence should be developed, which resulted in the provision that is now in the bill.

Perhaps David Bell will add some more details.

I feel that we have already answered that question; it is very similar to the question that Russell Findlay asked about enforcement and statistics. In fact, Elinor Findlay has already read out those statistics, and we have said—

The scale of the problem is not limited to enforcement and the number of people who would end up in prison. That is not how people in Scotland would characterise it.

The 2019 evidence review.

The Scottish Government is taking a broad range of actions to ensure that women and girls are and feel safe within our communities. We are improving our laws and investing in policing, and we have proposed a new national planning policy embedding human rights and equality in decision making to deliver better places for everyone.

Our public health approach to reducing violence, including the equally safe strategy, continues to focus decisively on preventing violence and tackling the underlying attitudes that perpetuate it. Our new two-year delivering equally safe fund will award £38 million to projects that focus on early intervention and prevention.

Police Scotland recently launched the “Don’t be that guy” public awareness campaign asking men to challenge their own and, importantly, each other’s behaviours and attitudes towards women. It is an important message for Scottish society, including for policing as individuals and as a service.

The campaign has generated a lot of interest and seems to have been very well received. It will be good, in time, to see what impact it has.

Police Scotland has advised me that more than 6 million people worldwide have seen the “Don’t be that guy” film and more than 80,000 people have visited the website. Government organisations and police services across the UK and beyond are changing the focus of their public communication on sexual violence to align with the “Don’t be that guy” strategy.

Police Scotland is developing a number of public campaigns for the forthcoming year that target men and which, under the “Don’t be that guy” banner, are related to different aspects of men’s violence.

I thank Maurice Golden for securing this evening’s debate on the important subject of dog theft. We are a nation of dog lovers. As the stories that many members have shared illustrate, dogs can be irreplaceable members of the family. I started my day by being woken up by my dog jumping on to my bed and licking my face. That is not my favourite thing, but there you go.

Over the past two years of the pandemic, dogs and other pets—there has been much mention of cats, too—have provided companionship for many people, especially for those who live alone, at a time when social contact has been limited to prevent the spread of coronavirus. People who have dogs or other pets will find it all too easy to imagine the sense of loss, anger and hopelessness that they would feel if their dog were to be stolen.

Although I absolutely acknowledge that any theft of a dog is a serious matter that can cause real anxiety and upset to its owners, it is important to note, by way of context, that it is not a high-volume crime in Scotland. Last year, the Scottish Government contacted Police Scotland, which told us that its internal records showed that 62 cases had been recorded across the whole of Scotland in 2019-20. That figure increased to 88 cases in 2020-21, but that is still a low number in the context of the number of dogs in Scotland. As members have noted, that increase is likely to have been driven by the rise in demand for puppies during the lockdown in that year.